Exceptions

Previous chapters focused on youth whose identities followed from their resources, making identities and resources difficult to separate. This chapter examines individuals whose resources and identities are misaligned as well as those whose resources or identities dramatically changed. These stories show that resources and identities each relate to downward mobility. Among those with the same resource inheritances, identities relate to who falls. And among those with the same identities, resources relate to who falls. Moreover, when inherited resources change, identities and then mobility pathways sometimes change as well. And when identities alone change, mobility pathways tend to change too.